


to build a home

by forcynics



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-3x05, non chronological, references to Quentin/Eliot/Margo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 15:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13707195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: For the first time in his life, Quentin stops waiting for a magical doorway to appear and lead him to a place that will make him happy, and learns to be happy where he is, with Eliot.(3x05, and some hints before, and the aftermath)





	to build a home

**Author's Note:**

> "THEY LIVED A LIFETIME TOGETHER" - the only thought i have been capable of processing since i watched 3x05

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When one day turns into three turns into fourteen turns into fifty, and it becomes apparent that they’re going to be stuck here far longer than they ever anticipated, Quentin thinks of home. 

He thinks of Earth in all its dull mundanity and he thinks of the Fillory of his own time and he thinks of Julia and Alice and Margo and how much he wishes he could tell them all what’s happened.

When fifty days turns into three hundred and sixty-five, when night settles in and he clinks glasses with Eliot, _happy anniversary_ , Quentin thinks about how much worse this would be if he were here alone.

He thinks about losing his mind in a forgotten time, he thinks about how far he’s come from a little cottage at a school of magic and farther still from an apartment in Brooklyn, and he thinks about the boy who welcomed him onto the grassy lawn of Brakebills. He thinks about that boy with his lofty posture and his crooked grin and always, always, always a drink in hand, telling him that having magic won’t make you happy but it means you’re not alone.

Quentin has been flung back in time in a strange world and there’s a very good chance that he’ll never make it out of here, but he’s not alone.

“Hey, um,” he starts to say.

Eliot arches an eyebrow, and Quentin gives up on whatever he was trying to say in favour of leaning forward, just quickly enough so he can’t change his mind before he kisses him. Eliot is warm and solid and so very real and Quentin can’t imagine being without him.

It feels like the most natural thing in the world, as if three hundred and sixty-five days was precisely the amount of time they needed to reach this inevitable conclusion. 

Eliot’s hand on his cheek is so, so sure when he kisses Quentin back. 

Quentin closes his eyes and forgets how many days how many hours how many tiles—

All of it.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The problem was this: Quentin didn’t know how to be happy.

He’d just never figured it out. 

Julia had told him, Alice had told him, and long before them, his parents had recognized it too: Quentin spent his whole life waiting for happiness to come to him. All that time waiting and waiting for the one thing that would change his life and make everything else better, a magic doorway that would lead him into happiness. 

He’d never dreamed it would be something as literal as a portal to the fantasy land of his beloved childhood books, but it didn’t really matter in the end because even that wasn’t enough.

And if that wasn’t, well, that was the really scary part, because it meant that it wasn’t the world around him that was the problem, it wasn’t Brooklyn or a magicless existence or even Earth itself, no change of circumstance would do the trick. 

It was just him.

But now:

There are no more magic kingdoms willing to open up in front of him. There is this strange little bubble of time where they’ve found themselves and there is a puzzle that could take a lifetime to solve and there is Eliot and there are both of their lives, passing by each day.

And he couldn’t explain how, exactly, couldn’t put it into words if anyone asked him what it was that finally clicked, but:

For the first time in his life, Quentin stops waiting for a magical doorway to appear and lead him to a place that will make him happy, and learns to be happy where he is, with Eliot.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
After that night, Eliot pulls away ever so slightly, says they don’t need to overthink it. Quentin knows what he’s worried about, the two of them trapped indefinitely here, so many different ways for everything to spiral and go wrong and then what would this be but their own private hell. 

He thinks Eliot is wrong, personally, but he lets him keep his emotions close, feels safer doing the same, leaving this nameless and silent between them, and then when Arielle turns up sad and alone he thinks, _maybe this is how it’s supposed to go, maybe Eliot had the right idea._

And for a while, they have this much: a life. Arielle, Quentin, Eliot, a small cottage in the woods, an unsolvable puzzle, and eventually a child. 

Quentin loves and is loved, by everyone around him, and he knows it with a certainty he never would have thought himself capable of when it comes to these sorts of things. He remembers their friends on Earth and in the Fillory of the future, and he misses them, and he hopes they find their way out of their troubles, but he is satisfied where he is and he is happy.

And at night, when the sky is clear above them and the stars are out, when Arielle and their son are sleeping peacefully inside and Quentin is sitting by the fire with Eliot, slouched together in a tangle of blankets and limbs, he thinks, _maybe I could be happy anywhere with you._

Quentin clears his throat, but he never gets the words out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The thing is, Eliot was everything Quentin wished he could be when he showed up out of the blue in his life, casually talented and casually cool, reeking of sophistication and superiority in a way that Quentin had never, would never come close to.

But Eliot wanted Quentin around, and that was new, that someone like Eliot would take him under his wing. 

It was sophistication by association — and the same with Margo too. It was downright intoxicating, just being around them, proof in physical forms that he really was part of an entirely new world.

That’s why it had been so easy to tumble into bed with them, always so inevitable. Maybe being part of their world hadn’t been enough in the end, not enough to make him happy when the drinks and the magic and the morning light wore off, but damn if it hadn’t still been a rush. 

It’s like bright sun spots in his memory now: when he walked into that cottage for the first time, when they drank too much in the garden or by the fireplace and laughed and laughed and laughed, when Eliot disdained of everyone else around them and Margo matched him for every snarky one-liner and Quentin laughed along and it felt they like were absolutely impenetrable.

Nothing’s impenetrable, eventually, but he’d been naive, okay?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They grow old together, because that’s what happens when you stay in one place for a lifetime — or even if you don’t, wherever you go, it’s the fate of all at the end.

(But it still manages to catch Quentin by surprise, the lines on his face, on Eliot’s, like they snuck up on them somehow.)

And then there’s the day when he looks over and he sees Eliot in the chair and—

He doesn’t like to think about that day.

It was necessary, he understands now. He never would have finished the puzzle, understood the beauty that was their very own lives, gotten a letter to Margo, any of it, without that inevitable conclusion (although it could have gone either way between them and sometimes he wonders why it didn’t) but still—

He _really_ doesn’t like to think about that day.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Quentin’s back in Fillory, the right Fillory in the right time, and it still doesn’t feel possible to be here, a king in his own castle in his own beloved kingdom, all his wildest dreams come true that still weren’t enough.

 _We had a family_. He remembers a child, a boy growing into a man, and Eliot there every step of the way. He remembers all the things he never said and all the moments they reached out to each other without needing any words at all. He can’t stop remembering.

There are faeries to be fought and quests to be carried out, there is no magic and a million other problems in its place, but there is also Eliot, High King of Fillory crowned by Quentin’s own hands and words, Eliot in a castle bedroom, drink in hand, deep in thought, and Quentin sits down gingerly on the bed beside him.

Eliot offers him a sip of his drink, and Quentin takes the glass but places it on the nearby desk instead. Eliot’s entire posture stiffens, and all Quentin can think, all he can keep thinking is _we had a lifetime._

“All that time,” he says slowly. “All that time, it’s just—it’s just sitting there, in my head now. An entire life of it. So much time and we never—I never even—” 

He can’t put any of into words properly, the immensity of what has happened between them.

“But we’re back now,” Eliot says slowly. “We made it. So.” It’s almost, _almost_ a question.

Quentin finally meets Eliot’s eyes, and there’s a warning in them, an echo from a past life, _we don’t have to overthink this._ But Quentin’s never been good at that, in any lifetime. He sees how still Eliot’s gone, but he nods.

“Yeah,” he says, just barely scrapes the word out, doesn’t even know if that’s the right answer. He just hopes Eliot hears his agreement and understands everything he means in this moment and everything he wants. And then he surges forward, kisses Eliot before his nerves catch up to him, and it feels like midnight in the middle of their own world in another lifetime, _happy anniversary_. It feels like so many nights and so many mornings and so many whispers of another life that feels stolen from him, even though he can remember it all.

Eliot is still, so still Quentin has just enough time to wonder if he misjudged everything, if Eliot is coping with this so, so differently—

—and then Eliot’s hands are scrambling in the front of his shirt, reeling him in and kissing him back, mouth open and achingly familiar.

And he could overthink it, he could fret about what the future holds, tomorrow morning and all the mornings after, he could worry that having Eliot this way will inevitably mean losing some part of him too, but—he doesn’t.

Quentin has already lived and loved and grieved and died and is miraculously still here. Who else can say they’ve had that kind of second chance?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There was a moment.

One moment, more than any other, when Quentin was perhaps the closest he ever came to happiness in his own life.

A moment on a lakeside, surrounded by most of his closest friends, in a land he dreamed of since childhood.

Quentin held a circlet of stones in his hands and placed it on Eliot’s head. He named him _High King Eliot, the Spectacular,_ and there was a wild energy bursting in his chest like nothing he’d ever known.

As if they were really standing here, as if any of this was real - it felt like kids playing games at first, like running around Julia’s living room building forts out of bed sheets when they were kids, like putting on a play for a nonexistent audience. 

They were just going through the motions, all of them, and there may have been a sense of wonder to it, but Quentin kept expecting someone to call him out—

But there was a moment, when he placed the crown on Eliot’s head, when Eliot stood slowly, smiled at him, and it didn’t feel like a game anymore.

It didn’t feel like playing pretend, it felt like an actual life, _his_ life, something true and strong and maybe realer than anything else he’d ever touched. It was right here for him to reach out and grab it, and he wanted it, suddenly, more than he’d ever wanted Brakebills, more than he’d ever wanted Fillory when it had been a book in his hands.

He was here, breathing cool Fillorian air, standing by the edge of a Fillorian lake, crowning the High King of Fillory, and he wanted all of it.

And for one ecstatic moment, it felt like he might really have it.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Their hands fumble, reaching, pulling at their clothes and warm on each other’s skin, both of them trying to remember and hold on to something that’s already slipped through their fingers once, something that never existed in the first place that they shouldn’t be able to remember but they do, they _do._

No matter how hard he tries not to, Quentin can’t entirely get the memory out of his head of that day when he looked over at Eliot in the chair and the world fell out beneath his feet—

But for now it’s slipping away, all of it’s slipping away. It was another life, another chance. There’s been so many chances and so much hesitancy and Quentin wants none of that now. They aren’t just making up for some lost time, they’re making up for _a lost lifetime._

It’s quick, it all goes so quickly, quiet and rushed and frantic, and when Quentin cries out he tries to swallow the sound, ducks his head into the crook of Eliot’s shoulder, panting, hoping Eliot won’t see that he’s crying. He doesn’t even know when he started, but he hears the catch of breath, the choked off sound that Eliot can’t quite keep in either as he crumples forward into Quentin, breathing heavy, damp cheek to Quentin’s collarbone.

Quentin shifts upright, ever so slightly, to better hold Eliot’s weight, his back strained from sitting up at such an awkward angle. Eliot’s face is in his neck, and his hair brushes against Quentin’s chin, in his mouth.

Everywhere the touch and the smell of him is reassuring.

He’s here, he’s really here, he’s not dead, he’s not a lifetime ago, not slipping through Quentin’s fingers after all.

Quentin feels the ghosts of their other lives stronger than he has yet, almost blinding, but beneath it, beating pulse by pulse, is something new and entirely their own, and it’s that to which he clings.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
